Murray's Blog.

July 29, 2013

Authentic Shakespeare

We received this query the other day:

Hi-I'm trying to figure out this production. Is it authentic
Shakespeare or some more recent adaptation? Supposed to be set in Roman Britain primarily. But all the publicity photos I've seen show a bunch of
guys carrying 1880's vintage American lever action rifles!!! What gives??

Good question, and perfectly legitimate too. Indeed our publicity photos do show three guys with rifles who look more like they came out of True Grit than ancient Britain. It turns out since we took those photos in the Garden of the Gods, we've ditched the rifles. But not because they are not period appropriate.

What is the appropriate period for Shakespeare plays? If you are strict constitionalist, you might go back to the original--but the original might surprise you. Here is the only contemporary drawing of a Shakespeare play in performance. sketched by a spectator at the Globe.

This is a scene from Titus Andronicus, a play set in the Roman period, like Cymbeline. But what's most conspicuous about the costumes is that they are quite a mixed bag. The dark figure on the right is clearly Roman, as perhaps are the kneeling figures. But the people on the left are distinctly Elizabethan, dressed in the clothes of Shakespeare's contemporaries. So when you go to the source what you find is kind of a mash-up, costuming that reflects both period and modern dress.

Cymbeline is one of Shakespeare's most period diverse plays: it seems to be taking place in Roman Britain, Renaissance Italy and wild Wales, which is a place and time all its own. It is also a play about costumes and clothes: the words "garment" and "fit" occur more times than in any other play by Shakespeare, and the word "fit" seems to mean spasm as well as suit. In the original production a cast of a dozen or so actors played more than 30 roles--they must have been changing garments and outfits all the time. One character specifically is built so like another he fits perfectly fit into the other's clothes--indeed you wonder whether these were meant for the same actor.

We have adopted Shakespeare's own practices in designing our production, which combines both period and contemporary elements. The play is a singular mash-up, a fractured fairy tale which proceeds in fits and starts, and ends with happy and comprhehensive wonder. So, for instance, the character of Belarius, the old warrior who is raising stolen princes in a cave way out in Wales, looks like this in the sketch by Rose Fox, our designer:

Hardly a figure out of Roman Britain, right? But we think he is Shakespeare's Belarius even so--with his tartan and fur and hat, a compound of Scottish romance and Amrican western---you could even make a case that Rooster Cogburn is one of his descendants. Both are rough, ready and good hearted.

And yes, we thought about the eye patch too--but decided against it, along with the rifles. A rifle makes nonsense out of a swordfight, unless it's unloaded--something that would never happen in Wales or Colorado). So in the flesh and on stage here is our Belarius (Tom Paradise), along with his princess (Susan Maris):

Which simply goes to show you that now, as then, Shakespeare is not of an age but for all time.

Comments

Period dress: why would Posthumus don a hoody? In his time was it the habit of a monk? Though celibate as his Imogen was chaste, was your intent in clothing him in such a hooded vestment to symbolize that status? No, for then it would've had no markings (except perhaps a cross), rather, it was emblazoned with the Union Jack -- like a modern t-shirt. What was it he said when he doffed the scarlet Roman cape?

"I'll disrobe me
Of these Italian weeds and suit myself
As does a Briton peasant: so I'll fight
Against the part I come with; so I'll die
For thee, O Imogen, even for whom my life
Is every breath a death; and thus, unknown,
Pitied nor hated, to the face of peril
Myself I'll dedicate. Let me make men know
More valour in me than my habits show.
Gods, put the strength o' the Leonati in me!
To shame the guise o' the world, I will begin
The fashion, less without and more within."

In this, truly "his meanest garment," he is a subject of the realm which in turn was a vassal of Rome. How different is he from Trayvon Martin, the heir to a subject race of Americans on United States (formerly British) soil, whose garment was a hoodie, the fashion of his peers, and who laid himself before the gun of George Zimmerman, a legion of the neighborhood watch of the governing race in Florida just as Pothumus resigned himself to the inevitable fate of the ordinary Briton in a Roman world?